Time that is intolerant / Of the brave and innocent, / And indifferent in a week / To a beautiful physique, / Worships language and forgives / Everyone by whom it lives; / Pardons cowardice, conceit, / Lays its honours at their feet. — W H Auden
Planet Press printed the 4ZZZ Big Banana as part of Zed’s campaign to get a high power licence from the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal that regulated broadcasting licenses in the 1970s. Planet Press was an anarchist press in Brisbane run by Dan Van Blarcom who was in the pay of special branch. The National Party later disendorsed their former Whitsunday candidate, Dan Van Blarcom, because he was in the Australian Nazi party. So was community radio 4ZZZ infiltrated by the special branch?
The video shows 4Zzz announcers Michael Finucan and Hayden Thompson picking up a big banana from the Woolloongabba police station in 1978. Zed had just been promoted to a high power licence by Australian broadcasting tribunal head, Bruce Gyngel. Station founder Jim Beatson later supported the station keeping a low profile politically so as not to upset the federal government. Station co-ordinator Denis Reinhardt banned the radical women’s program, Mergaherz, and took the Civil Liberties program off air after it criticized the federal governments decision to mine and export uranium, calling out the liberal senator for Queensland Neville Boner for his support for mining uranium on Aboriginal Lands.
The state government used special branch surveillance and thug thuggery to repress the democratic rights movement. In the late 70s, Special Branch officer Domenico Cacciola was promoted to desk sergeant at Woolloongabba police station. Cacciola later wrote a book called: ‘The Second Father: An insiders story of cops, crime and corrupt cops’.
ON 24 October 1977, while still in the special branch, Cacciola arrested Stephen Zaborowski outside the South Brisbane watch house. This followed the largest mass arrest of people opposing a government. 418 people were arrested for defying the ban on political street marches and opposing uranium mining and export.
In The Second Father, Cacciola falsely claimed that Stephen assaulted him outside the magistrate’s courthouse on 24 October 1977. Quite the contrary, Cacciola assaulted the ‘Lanky Yank’. Cacciola’s assault is shown in this photo.
Lindy Morrison was very concerned about the people arrested on October 22nd. Here is a photo of Lindy on the ground near watchouse roll-a-door asking about the well-being of some of the 418 people arrested on 22 October 1977 and crammed into the South Brisbane watchhouse. See comments above.
Ian Curr, 13 November 2025
Notes
Don’t let sleeping bananas lie was the slogan of a 1977 campaign attempting to democratize radio station 4Zzz.
Well that was news to me, but then I may have moved on by the time it was discovered that Dan was a Nazi, although I always had my suspicions..
Lanky Yank-Stephen